Max Weber (1864-1920)

Max Weber (1864-1920) was considered as the most ardent supporter of Eurocentrism, and he suggested that capitalism is the specialty of Europe and Oriental countries such as India and China do not contain sufficient factors to develop capitalism. Weber wrote many treatises to publicize the distinctiveness of Europe. In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, he wrote that the "rational" capitalism manifested by its enterprises and mechanisms only appear in the Protestant western countries, and a series of generalized and universal cultural phenomena only appear in the west. Even the state, with a written constitution and a government organized by trained administrators and constrained by rational law, only appear in the west, even though other regimes can also comprise states. Rationality is a multi-layered term whose connotations are developed and escalated as with the social progress. Weber regarded rationality as a proprietary article for western capitalist society.

Critical responses to Weber

Weber's explanations are highly specific to the historical periods he analysed. Some academics disagree, pointing out that, despite the fact that Weber did write in the early twentieth century, his ideas remain alive and relevant for understanding issues like politics, bureaucracy, and social stratification today.

Many scholars, however, disagree with specific claims in Weber's historical analysis. For example, the economist Joseph Schumpeter argued that capitalism did not begin with the Industrial Revolution but in 14th century Italy. In Milan, Venice and Florence, the small city-state governments led to the development of the earliest forms of capitalism. In the 16th century, Antwerp was a commercial centre of Europe. Also, the predominantly Calvinist country of Scotland did not enjoy the same economic growth as the Netherlands, England and New England. It has been pointed out that the Netherlands, which had a Calvinist majority, industrialised much later in the 19th century than predominantly Catholic Belgium, which was one of the centres of the Industrial Revolution on the European mainland. Emil Kauder expanded Schumpeter's argument, by arguing the hypothesis that Calvinism hurt the development of capitalism by leading to the development of the labour theory of value.